According to the prior art, initiating a dialogue has required a text-based initiation, which can be difficult from the user's point of view, and the situation can form a threshold question for starting to use the service. On the other hand, message dialogues are implemented purely on a text-message basis. A message dialogue may break, if it has been wished to make contact in the dialogue with the aid of a voice message, such as a voice call. The dialogue has had no support for voice messages; instead the voice message has remained an event external to the dialogue.
In addition, according to the prior art, bulk deliveries of e-mail messages have been implemented from a number inside operators' networks using Content Gateway technology. The delivery address of the Content Gateway bulk-delivery technology on the network side is not a familiar telephone number, which has the form +358 400 123 456, but is a short service number, which is not a real telephone number, but instead, for example 16400. Because it is not a real network number, it also cannot roam from one network to another, but goes directly to the content gateway of the operator in question. In the present document, the term roaming refers to either the updating of number information when a terminal device moves from one country to another, or the functionality of a service number when the service is used from a different country to that in which the service provider is located. Operators have constructed varied and complex solutions, by means of which services can be made to function also in other operators' networks and number spaces. In practice, this leads to complicated mutual agreements on the joint use of specific numbers, for example, by routing messages coming to a specific number of another operator back to the operator owning the number.
For years, attempts have been made to harmonize numbers on a European level, but the competing operators have never reached agreement on general service numbers. An additional drawback of the present technology is that, in the solution, the connection equipment inside the network of one operator should be connected with the corresponding connection equipment of all the other operators of networks (point to point). This creates a large number of agreements and connections from one place to another. Therefore in practice such solutions only function between a few operators.
The message bulk-delivery systems according to the prior art are thus implemented on a telephone-operator-specific basis, in such a way that the ‘sender’ field of the messages has shown the operator's own number, which as described above is not a roaming number. The services have therefore not functioned outside the operator's own country. Such a system is not suitable for query dialogues of a demanding type, as the use of the ‘reply function’ has always returned the messages to the same number and then only if the subscriber has been in their home network.
Attempts have also been made to solve the problem using tailor-made modem banks, but these solutions have been slow, expensive, and even unreliable.